 is this is, I think, I think been the best act that's happened in terms of, if you compare to, say, the Bush Administration, what we did with the F process, this is definitely an improvement upon what we did then. And I think there's a lot of learnings that are going to carry over into the future. I think getting everyone to agree on the same set of constraints and having national security staff involved, I think has been, as overall, I think been a positive thing. I think we're going to learn a lot about that. There are some elephants in the room that I think we'll talk about and some challenges. But I think the fact that we have such a good crowd, I think speaks to the fact that there is some energy around this in the administration, but also some hope in the development community as well about learning from this process. And we have a paper as well that we're going to release today that Jerry Jensen has authored. And so thank you, Jerry, for that. And so you'll hear from Jerry. And then we have an excellent panel for this Chevron forum that we're doing. And so I also want to thank my friends at Chevron for sponsoring this. So without further ado, I'm going to cede the floor to Gail Smith. And Gail, I'm going to ask you if you want to speak from here. You can speak from there. But I think you don't need an introduction for this audience other than what I've given you. Oh, thank you. Do you mind if I stay here? Yes, absolutely. Please. Great. Everybody. And Dan, thank you very much both for pulling this event together. But Dan and I speak from time to time. And I'm very appreciative of him and of the fact that CSIS on a number of issues that we're looking at on the development front has worked with us. And I think reinforce something that is critically important to all of us, which is that while I'm pretty sure we agree on everything politically, that this enterprise is one that is important for the US government period. And so it's important for whatever administration may be in the White House. And I think one of the reasons we've been able to achieve a lot of gains over the last decade is because of that. And I will also just say as a resident of the district to have a space that is not imbued with Politics 24-7 is delightful. But thank you, Dan, and for this program. And let me also say at the outset thank you to all my colleagues, many of whom you will hear from. This whole experiment called PFG, I'm thinking of the tagline, better than F. It is, yes. I think you're going to change it from the F process to, I don't know, the M process, meaning like the money process or something. It's the PFG. Anyway, but I think we're grappling with many of the same things that the prior administration was grappling with in the F process. The other thing I just want to say at the outset that I find really quite intriguing, and I think it's very helpful to us. When we do things on global health, on food security, on some of the big sector-based issues, we draw a very, very large set of constituencies. And I think when we get down to how do we actually do development as the US government, we draw a lot of people who think about this all the time. And I just want to say, and I mean this quite sincerely, the fact that all of you think about this, that you're interested enough on a Friday morning where it's kind of drizzly, come talk about the PFG, and that many of you have been as supportive as you have been of what we're trying to do here, means an enormous amount to me, and I think I can speak for all my colleagues. So thank you for that. So going into the PFG and why it came about, let me just say a few things about the backdrop, because I think that's been very important and has a lot to do with where we are on development. And it's really a very different place. I served in the Clinton administration and the difference in that period of time was substantial. And I think we found several things that were quite different. One is that we've got a much richer menu of successes. There are more countries that have made more progress, more sectors that have registered more results, more participants in the development landscape that have put new ideas on the table. There's an increased independence of developing countries. It's, you know, the donor beneficiary relationship is not entirely dead, but it is seriously ill. And I think developing countries have stepped up in some ways to own and frame the debates that is hugely important. Part of that is that we've also got a lot more leaders and institutions putting political skin in the game. And this to me is an enormous game changer. It's not simply a government having a reasonably good policy, but it is some government, sometimes it's ministers, sometimes it's heads of state, saying that development is important and putting political capital behind that. That changes the dynamic from one where we go into a country and say really here's what you need to do to create an enabling environment for everything to work. They're already thinking about that, so it changes the dynamics. The evidence of success that we've got across the board has had huge impact, whether it's the kind of outcomes that are being registered in things like global health, whether it is some of the outcomes of MCC and aid programs or other donor programs, whether it is sustained economic growth in a number of countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. Even now with the financial challenges in Europe that those are being sustained. That's done a couple of things. One, it's created an incentive effect where, and I think this is an outcome of the MCC that may have been under-anticipated, which the incentive effect of oh, we wanna get good rankings, also we wanna get in the queue for that. We've seen the same with something we launched called the Open Government Partnership where there's a huge incentive effect of countries that wanna participate in these things. And I think it's also changed the whole notion of peer review and how peers engage one another, so there's much more dialogue between and among developing countries within regions and between regions than there used to be, where quite frankly in a lot of cases they don't need us in the middle. But things like peer reviews are gaining serious traction. Third, obviously the demographic shift in poverty has been not insignificant. But I think part of that is the international debate's changed somewhat because of what's happened in Africa. Again, the notion that extreme poverty has been reduced substantially in Sub-Saharan Africa. Now granted it's grown in some other middle income countries with large, extremely poor populations. That a number of countries are sustaining growth. That hippoc seems to have worked in the sense of creating a pipeline and a pathway for countries to make progress. That's changed the debate because I think when Africa was squarely on the bottom, there was always a very negative and I think a fairly pejorative kind of debate that went on, I think that's been a game changer. I think we're seeing a shift away from donors thinking that our job is simply to compensate for governments inadequacies and kind of fill the pipes that aren't being filled and to actually figure out how we invest in potential. And then I think last, even though in the weakest area, which I think is fragile states, where I think we've not as an international community yet learned enough from transitions, we tend to repeat some of the patterns of the past like transitions take two years, let's do everything at once and then wonder why it isn't a wild success. There's some interesting progress there. The G7 Plus, the fragile states initiative, where leaders in some of these transition countries are themselves taking a serious look at and sharing with each other. Here's what really needs to happen. So I think that's the backdrop. Then we get to where are we, the US government. And I think most of you have followed what the aim was in the first term, which was to have a development policy. I think we had an implicit policy, but we didn't have an explicit policy. So there was the presidential directive that Dan discussed, but I think there are a few things that also informed why PFG came about. There's been a huge challenge to foreign aid. And I think this is one that our foreign assistance agencies, USAID and MCC have stepped up to beautifully, but to be more transparent, more effective and more efficient. The Spaghetti Bowl, which is the chart that I think originally came from Brookings of all the interagency with all the, this is the word. It looked like a Jackson Pollock piece of art, right? Yeah. Well, the Spaghetti Bowl turns out to be a pretty good meal. And it's very tempting, and I say this as somebody who came into government from the outside where you have the luxury of pretending that there's no Congress, no budget or nothing else. And so you can kind of do things in isolation. It's tempting to say, we need to rethink the org chart. And if we had a white piece of paper, I think it's probably unlikely that we would draw the Spaghetti Bowl, or that internationally we would draw what we've got. But I think that what we've found is that in that bowl are some extraordinary tools and resources that are underutilized. And I think there's been a tendency in the past to conflate development with foreign aid. To think about USAID as the US Agency for Foreign Aid as opposed to the US Agency for Development. And to underutilize these other agencies that either have stakes in the outcome or real tools they can bring to the table. So ultimately I think what we found is that it's less about how do you unravel all the spaghetti. Which again, some may think that you should do that. I will just say that from my perspective, there still being 24 hours in a day on balance, that probably would eat up pretty much all the time we've got to do anything on development. But I think what we found is that rather than the org chart, what we needed was policy cohesion and coherence. The strategic deployment of the different tools and a division of labor between and among agencies. And I think the PFG gave us the platform to do that. And I will say that that platform and the emphasis on achieving sustained and inclusive economic growth, the reliance on evidence, so on and so forth, has also informed some other things that we've done. The new alliance on food security and nutrition, Power Africa is influenced by many of the same things. So again, thanks for even getting this. Cause I think we think it's really, really important. And I think I can speak for my colleagues. I feel sometimes like PFG is a small cult that exists within the US government because the people who have been involved in it have internalized it, get it, and I think see it for what it is. Which is a real game changer. It is not the linear, there's poverty in this country, we need to do something in this sector, let's put this much money there. It's a stepping back and looking at the theory of the case. So on the plus side, what have we found? Again, it gives us a theory of the case based on evidence. Now, I think we all live in worlds, whether in government or in the development community or the think tank world where the theory of the case is often driven by strength of opinion and opinions are great, I have a lot of them, but I think that what we've found is that when it's based on evidence and when you've got a set of facts on the table that everybody agrees is the evidence, you've got both a theory of the case, but a theory of the case that isn't terribly disputable because I'm not gonna say, well, that may be your theory, Eric Postel, but it's not mine. Facts are facts and evidence is evidence. So that's huge. And the fact that it is a shared theory of the case within the interagency and between the US government and importantly in these other countries, their interagency, because that's one of the other things that's happened here and we've had a lot of really interesting feedback which I imagine my colleagues will talk about from these four governments about how they've thought about their own interagency in this. So the second is the ability to think about some of the constraints to development, some of the policy and quite frankly, political constraints in an unthreatening way. So in a country where corruption may be seen as a binding constraint to growth or where there's some political tension and noise around the role of the private sector that may emerge from ideological battles of the past, those are touchy issues, those are political regardless of how much impact they have on development. But again, when you've got facts on the table, when you've got a group of people that have gone through this very arduous analytic process together, there's a way to discuss those issues that I would argue is fundamentally different from the way we engage governments on tough issues. It's much easier. I think there's a great deal of trust in the room so I think that's been a huge thing. I think partnership is a really important word. It's used all the time. Anything that two entities do together is now a partnership. I'm for it, but I think a partnership isn't just, I don't know, two people going for coffee, I guess. And I think in this case, it really is a genuine partnership because the teams we put together across the interagency and these governments put together work together like this. I mean, we get on video conferences, our interagency to their interagency, and I think there's some bonds formed that give depth to a partnership that is quite important. There's something called interagency bliss that has emerged from this. And I think, look, we live in a world where there's one budget and it's all we know, as we all know, massive resources available to everything anybody in government wants to do. Where there's a desire of every agency to succeed and the incentive structures aren't always, well, take your brand out of the equation, everybody just worked together. In this, I mean, and I've told this story before, I apologize if you've heard it, I've walked into a couple meetings that I chaired, whether it was on El Salvador, Tanzania, Philippines, whatever country it might have been. I keep saying, I'm sorry, am I in the wrong government? Like, where am I? Because, and this is at one level entertaining, but at one level it's so important when USTR turns to USAID and says you were so helpful in laying out those issues and USDA pipes up and says, did you get that deal done? We sent our team there and Treasury says, got your back at the bank. I mean, it's extraordinary what happens when the different strands of spaghetti are all working towards the same end, but with this strategic division of labor. And it's one of the most satisfying things in just the day-to-day, you know, these jobs are fun and exciting, but seeing daylight is rare and so on and so forth. But to be able to work with my colleagues across the interagency and see the effort that everybody is making to make everyone successful, because it's very clear that if everybody works together we're gonna get a better outcome. So I think that's been delightful. I think a better integration of development and diplomacy in the economic and the political. Now, I know in the development community there's been a lot of debate about what's this development diplomacy connection? Does that mean diplomacy is gonna eat development and so on and so forth? And I think this is something different. This is really, I think, the connection that there should be. I think we have found that one of the things that's made PFG more successful in some places than others is when we have had serious diplomatic heft from the State Department. And that isn't serious diplomatic heft to figure out what the trade facilitation piece is or what to do in the energy sector. That's to help marshal and drive the debate on some of the more difficult and contentious issues. Sometimes it's been people in the department. Often it's been really top-nuch ambassadors who with a country team have just been terrific leaders on that. So that's been great. And finally, I think on the plus side, this really means something to our partners. As you know, we didn't build PFG with a massive amount of resources behind it. I think we have been, I'm speaking for myself, surprised and very surprised in a couple of cases at how seriously PFG is taken, including my heads of state. And not serious as a, oh, here's a thing we have from the US, but serious as a partnership. And I think that's huge. So let me come around to the other end and talk about what some of the challenges are going forward. And we've spent a lot of time reaching out to our posts. We've sat down with the four countries in some detail, talked among ourselves about what do we think of this? What have we learned? Again, because it's a bit of an experiment. I think one challenge is that it's really labor-intensive. Now, MCC knows this very well from its model on doing a constraints to growth analysis. But to do that analysis in a collective way within the US government with our partners, based on evidence and to be really rigorous, takes a lot of time. And it takes a lot of time on the parts of people in both governments who also have other responsibilities. There isn't, you know, we don't have people who are just designated to do nothing but PFG and neither do our partners. So it's quite labor-intensive. And it takes time. I mean, you could do a quick and dirty constraints to growth analysis in a week, but it would be dirty, right, Patrick? Okay. Arrange resources behind it is challenging. Some of that is because, as we all know, a lot of our resources are already designated some by the hill, some by us. And so our agility in terms of being able to move different resources around or between agencies or from this objective to that objective is difficult, but there have been a couple of extraordinary successes, I think, or more than that. And again, the team can talk more about these where agencies have really sat down together and said, well, there's a finite amount of money here. Do we put it here or here? And a couple places where we've made some big shifts, but that's not easy. It's a hard sell to those that don't pay close attention. I don't mean a hard sell because it's unpopular, but if you're out talking to the public or if you're making the case for a new approach to development, for good reason, when you can explain to people the impact of a bed net in reducing malaria, that's clear. Everybody gets that very quickly. When you walk people through getting to the tipping point on HIV and AIDS, or even when you can talk about increasing food security, those are more tangible. Because this is fairly process heavy, it's an easy sell to people who pay a lot of attention to how we do development. It's a harder sell beyond that. And that's a challenge because in this world of trying to create space to do new things on development, you need kind of broad support. So again, the reason I will thank you for the third time is that we want to have the space to continue doing this and the fact that you all follow it, and I'm not saying you all have to endorse it 100%, like 95 is totally fine. But the fact that you all follow it and there's some other think tanks in town that have given it some visibility is enormously helpful because it's a paragraph. It's not a bumper sticker. So what do we do with it? And in all frankness, let me just share with you what some of our thinking is. One option is to add additional countries. And I think there's a very strong case to be made for doing that. I think the challenge to that is again, it's labor intensive. So there's a very real, how do we think about bandwidth? But, and none of these are on or off the table. These are, the second that we've grappled with a lot is is there a way to do a less intensive version of this but still honor the fundamental commitment and need for rigorous shared analysis? We think there might be some ways to do that and to not compromise the kind of underpinning and the rigor of it, but still find a way to make it a little bit less cumbersome. The third is, and this is already happening, to extract some pieces of PFG that have been very important and use them elsewhere. And quite frankly, we're seeing a fair amount of that already. There's a great deal of sort of automaticity in that, whether it is more joint analyses, more of this notion of looking at constraints in a serious way, more of pulling agencies together, so on and so forth. There's a demand, I think we have felt from some regions that we hear, both Carrie and I have had the experience, as I imagine others in the interagency have, where somebody walks in and says, can you PFG my country? And that's kind of, you know, that's really rewarding. It's a verb, that's a good sign. So I think there's a desire for more of it. How we do that is something we're still taking a look at. So with that, Dan, and with your permission, Dan, I'd like to stop here, I told Dan, I'd be happy to take some questions. I'll answer them to the best of my ability, but I also don't wanna undercut the insights and wisdom of my colleagues who, this may have started in the White House, but it's a success because agencies and leaders and agencies have taken it on and driven it. So I'll try not to make up stuff. Well, yeah, exactly. Try not to make up stuff, that would be good. Gail, thank you for being here. I wanna ask one question, then I'll open it up, and I know there are a lot of thoughtful people in the room, and you alluded to it, but if we have a supply-driven process of identifying what we're gonna spend money on through interest groups and through strength of opinion, et cetera, and we've already decided in several countries that 95 or 98% of our budget's gonna be in one specific sector, but the constraints and the evidence say, well, actually it should be maybe 90% or 85% and shouldn't we shift it? So how do we go back to all the folks who have very strong opinions about saying, well, it really ought to just be 98% strawberries and the resources are saying, well, the constraints analysis saying it's blueberries and raspberries would be a far better thing. How do you go and tell the hill that? How do you tell the interest group community that? How do you tell all the folks who are heavily invested and have been heavily invested for five, 10, 15 years in a particular allocation of people time and money in a certain set of interventions because that's either for a variety of reasons, some very good, but perhaps some that are driven by perhaps strength of opinion? That's a good question and it's hard, and I wanna be fair on this, because I think earmarks come from the legislative branch of government, they also come from the executive branch of government because you set priorities and you say, here's what we're gonna do, and then oops, it turns out in country X that you've got a priority in the mix and another priority comes along and then, oh heavens, what do you do? I think, look, I think some of this is gonna change, I think some of it isn't. I think we're probably always gonna have advocates and champions of particular development activities and on balance, I think that's a good thing because I think there's some line items in the development budget that wouldn't be there if it wasn't for champions of issue X or Y, but I also think a couple things are gonna help unravel this over time. One is that when you start having results, I think there are a lot of thoughtful people on the Hill who when they see results are I think much more open to saying, all right, we're gonna create a little bit more flexibility here and we've done briefings on the Hill and staff briefings and I think there's a real interest on the part of a lot of Hill staff on what this means and how this might inform their thinking and our thinking about how you create that agility but still the accountability. I think our partners are gonna drive more and more of this over time because as they succeed and make progress, they are gonna be better positioned to say, well actually here's where we need the resources, here and not there so I think that will change it over time. I will say that one of the things that I do worry about that I think is a bigger challenge is I counted, I think it was in the first two years that I was in my job, there were requests from between 20 and 25 new kind of sector-based initiatives and they were all worthy but fighting the tendency to try to do everything everywhere about everything is something that I think we've all gotta think about and it's been a challenge for us. Very big in global health, very big in food security, very big in power. There are a lot of people that would like us to be very big in nine other things. We can't do everything so how do we think about priorities a bit more and then I think how do we also show within the executive branch to the public and to the Hill that we can do a division of labor with other countries because I think that's something that's gonna free us up but I wish I could say I think it's probably gonna be next year that we're just gonna have completely blank checks and complete flexibility to do anything anybody needs to do everywhere. This time next year. I don't think that's true but I do think that there is space if we can prove that we're getting results and outcomes and investing taxpayer resources in a wise way I think we can get some more of the flexibility that we'd like to have. Okay I'm gonna take two questions and I'm not gonna be able to get there. We have 20 questions, I'm not gonna pick 20 people, I'm gonna pick two so when people can come up to me later and be angry with me afterwards and that's fine but so I'm gonna ask Holly Wise is gonna be one and let's see other folks here and I'm gonna ask Delma Ask is the other so those are gonna be the two folks. So you can come after me and say I'm a terrible person and all of that and I'll be available out front for all the folks who didn't get to ask questions. Holly please. You're a great person Dan. Thank you. Gail thanks so much. This was so interesting and what I kept thinking as you were talking is about leadership in PFG and particularly your leadership and the role that you've played and what does it mean going forward and then thinking about these four great experiments and that interagency bliss, my new favorite word. So is this a happy situation that has worked out in four instances or to some extent has worked out in four instances and then we don't PFG everybody other country or does this suggest to you a very important new model and the focus on this process of interagency, alignment and coordination and role sort. So in other words if the juice is worth the squeeze what do we do going forward? Does it suggest to you some work on architecture of coordination and incentives that will be different than what we have right now? Let's do this World Bank style and so if you could just pass that Dan and we'll group the two questions. Hi, I very much appreciate. Delma Askey, former head of USTDA. Yeah I very much appreciate the spaghetti bowl comment because I know all administrations included this one has expended a lot of energy on rearranging the boxes. So I think your comments about how to use the boxes as they are is a very helpful one but I wanted to make a couple of comments to elicit your comments and perhaps think about and that is that nexus between developing countries and those that will be more contributing partners, the beaks, the bricks, those emerging economies because I think internationally, WTO, OECD, et cetera, there is this hold back by those countries who don't wanna step out of the development definition and into the donor more developing country definition because of how they're viewed organizationally. So someone like a Brazil or someone like a China or someone like an India. So I think that's something you might wanna continue to think about is how to project this continuum and connections so that these countries are allowed to partner better without the fear of losing their influence in the developing world. And I'll also make one more comment about the budget. I think one of the most successful things in USTDA and it was easy to do because we were such a small agency is trying to reserve money for later in the year and not program at all. And then then you have some resources as you suggest to crisis manage or change priorities, et cetera. I had to do that on a larger scale in our current budget structure. I know it's very difficult. Oh, sorry, thanks for those questions. Let me take that one first and then come back. I think when you get to the emerging market countries, it's quite interesting. And I think, you know, fair enough, I think some of them, there's some forums where it's more effective to be a developing country and there's others where it's more effective to be a developed country. And the fact of the matter is most of them actually are in between. And so we find that we work with them on both fronts. So in the G20, for example, we do a lot of work with Brazil and India and South African bricks countries on things like how do you deal with some of the infrastructure deficits. And it's fascinating there because on the one hand, they are trying to think about how do we grapple with this for countries that may be poorer or less developed than we are, but it's also a legitimate issue in their countries as well. So I think there is that middle ground. I think we are finding, particularly on food security and infrastructure, much more collaboration with those countries. It's less, quite frankly, than as donors. And they are quite insistent in the G20 context that they don't think of themselves as donors. And I think that's less because there's a lack of desire to put resources into development and more because the discussion is not about development as an assistance driven enterprise. So I think it's gonna be in flux for a while, but the other thing that's really interesting is that with the Philippines and El Salvador, for example, you've got countries that, these aren't the poorest countries in the world. They also have not fully crossed the threshold, but I think it's a very different conversation than if you're doing this in a country that has been much more in the line of sight of the development community over a long period of time. So say in the Sub-Saharan African countries where there's been a huge focus, obviously. In the Philippines, I think it's a very different model and I think an extremely useful model, again, as I said at the outset, for having a dialogue about a host of issues that it's less donor beneficiary, it says peers. How do we grapple with X, Y, or Z? On the, you know, what does this mean and do we change the architecture and the incentive structure? Look, as I said, I think there are a number of ways that we've looked at how you proceed with PFG and I'm of the view, your comments are very kind, but I think if anything is dependent on me or a given individual, then we haven't succeeded. I do think that we have champions and leaders across the interagency who are doing two things, leading in real time, but also trying to figure out how to institutionalize some of this in their own agencies. And I think one of the things that we're finding, because it's not just in PFG where I think we're seeing some of these changes about greater reliance on evidence, on the notion of what success looks like. Success in HIV and AIDS now is not just how many people you treat, it's how many countries are in a position to control the epidemic. And so I think that kind of thinking the dialogue between us and our partners has changed in multiple, multiple fronts. On the architecture, again, I think we have something in the national security staff that has a mandate to coordinate. I'm pretty sure our agencies feel adequately coordinated. I'm sure they'd all love to have more. So I'm kind of of the view that it's our job to make that work, on the one hand, as the coordinating mechanism, but also, success in any of these is agencies owning them and leading in us also giving them the heft to do that. So I'm personally, and this is, I don't know that there is an official position on this, I'm not of the view we need lots more, coordinators or czars or recently these people here. Keep going. Okay, Gail, thank you for being with us. Sure. Please join me in thanking Gail Smith. I'm gonna ask my friend, Jerry Jensen to come up and we're gonna move to the next part of our program. I'm gonna walk Gail out. Well, the reason that we put this together among other things is, A, our partners Tam Nhan, who's now left Chevron, as long with our friend Rebecca Hummel and us were brainstorming about ideas for an event. And we also knew that our friend Jerry Jensen, who many of you know in the room and has an affiliation with CSIS, was putting together a paper looking at the partnership for growth. And so we use the paper as the catalyst to pull this event together. We don't have the entire paper out front, but we have the executive summary. You can get the entire paper online, partially because we're in the process of moving, we're moving in about a week's time. So we've moved, so printers, et cetera, we just made a decision on the amount of paper that we'd have out front. So bear with us if you would, but I strongly recommend you read the entire paper. Certainly read the executive summary, but I know that Jerry's gonna give us some of the highlights of the paper. So this is the Cliff Notes version of her paper, but with that, Jerry, I'm gonna cede the floor to you. Dan, thank you so much for the opportunity to think about this, to write the paper. Let me just dive in to three lessons that we learned that I learned doing the paper and a few thoughts about what an achievable agenda might be going forward. Just a little background. The paper was the result of about 30 conversations with folks inside and outside the government involved in partnership for growth. I wanted to focus on two elements of partnership for growth, really the toughest nuts to crack. Can we coordinate the government around a development strategy in four countries? And can we attract the participation of non-aid actors, which I defined as the private sector, to our development strategies. And I also talked to a number of companies that were interested in participating in partnership for growth and other development initiatives to get a sense of what it would take to get them engaged. And I admit, Dan, I colored outside the lines just a little bit. I didn't just answer the question of what are the lessons from partnership for growth, but I wanted to think a bit about where we headed. What is a sustainable development paradigm as a practical matter? What does it look like on a day-to-day basis? And just let me define what I mean when I say so. And we are glad you colored outside the lines because actually there's several chapters about various tools that as part of the coloring outside the lines. It's a much prettier picture. It's a prettier picture. So what is sustainable development in my mind? Sustainable development is a development strategy that leverages the core competencies of companies that goes beyond the traditional corporate social responsibility engagement that has characterized much of what we've done. And that is focused on attracting investment. Why investment? And I don't have to tell this room, investment really holds the keys to the kingdom when it comes to achieving sustainable economic growth, to broad-based economic growth, because it's only investment that brings the jobs, that brings the new businesses, that brings the supply chains, the training, the market linkages that quickly raise living standards. So what were the lessons? The first lesson on coordination was that we can do this. We did achieve, I think, getting at least the development agencies on the same page in four countries. And that was a first. It's no small feat considering that those agencies are represent the largest part of our development budget. We saw other firsts. We saw greater transparency, much greater transparency on the types of programs that could be brought to bear on a particular partnership for growth goal. We saw MCC working with the trade agencies. They've been working with USAID, and now they broaden their scope and compact development. So the first lessons is we can get the agencies on the same page, at least in Washington, in four countries. The second lesson, but let me just step back. There are two reasons for that. I think the reason why we can do it is we had greater national security staff engagement. And because those three agencies shared in the creation of a strategic blueprint, which was the constraints analysis that had a cascading effect on increasing coordination down to the action plans. So the second lesson, though, is that I think there's a limit to what the national security staff alone can achieve with its limited capacity in the coordination. I think they could not overcome some of the structural barriers that keep our trade and development programs in silos. They couldn't overcome the different mandates of the agencies. They couldn't overcome the different congressional jurisdictions. They couldn't overcome the different budget appropriators. And that may be why we didn't see the programmatic budget alignment that's important. So on the issue of attracting non-aid actors, even more difficult, clearly, but I think increasingly important. One of the statistics I came across during the report was an Ernst and Young study that showed us that foreign direct investment has increased at a compound annual rate of 22% a year since 2007, well beyond what any donor has provided. And I think it's indicative of the new landscape we're looking at now, where the traditional way of doing development, of writing a check for development is less and less relevant. The trick for partnership for growth, for any development initiative, is to harness those private sector resources to serve development goals. But it's not easy. I think everyone on the panel has tried hard, I've tried hard. So the third lesson I drew was maybe the reason why this is so hard is because we are still grounded in basically a government to government paradigm. What do I mean? The conversation about how to spend the money, where to spend the money, is still largely between governments. And the conversation is probably about how do we strengthen the enabling environment so then the private sector will come, sort of a build it and they will come approach. And most of what we do on development, including partnership for growth, is grounded in that paradigm. Now it's changing. We all know it's changing. The private sector participation has increased significantly and I point to a number of examples. MCC, lately Ghana and El Salvador, really made an effort to reach out to the private sector and it did bear fruit. We have an MOU with GE. Clearly there's investment there. Clearly GE is doing more than what they would have otherwise done because of the risk mitigation of the MCC compact. But I still think that you're grafting the private sector into what is basically a government driven model that means that attracting investment is still somewhat serendipitous. The door is open. We want the private sector to come but you still don't get to the ship's passing problem. How do you align an investment strategy with a development program when you've got very rigid funding cycles and project development timelines? So the question I post in the paper is, is there a way, and I tried to think a bit about, is there a way, is there a more direct route to sustainable development outcomes? Gail was talking about the most efficient and effective way. And some of the, I thought about processes. I thought about incentives and I thought about tools. And I played what if. What if we had a process that started first with investment strategies that met development goals rather than the other way around? I think it's much easier to get at that intersection of where an investment can intersect a development goal if you start first with what the companies are doing or what they could do. And in fact, you could even create a dynamic and we've seen it happen where you stimulate investment that wouldn't otherwise occur because they know you have the risk mitigation of the US government. Incentives, what if we had incentives to attract investment? What if we had incentives to enhance the developmental impact of existing investment? A number of companies, and Chevron is one of them, have invested huge sums of money in raising the livelihoods of the communities where they operate. Much deeper pockets, much longer timelines, much more extensive capacity building. Can we incentivize agencies to work with them? And I know AID is working with Chevron there and we just want to put wind in the sails of that. Tools, I think this really is where the rubber hits the road. I think there's a real question of whether or not the tools we have are up to the task of implementing the vision that we've laid out. And I think one unfortunate side effect of a government to government approach is that the toolbox is really rusty when it comes to sharing risk with the private sector. Or mitigating the risk, lowering the risk profile of specific investments. The companies I talked to all said that the types of investment that we're trying to attract in the most transformational sectors, like power, like agriculture, have much higher rates of return at the front end. That why? Because the capacity issues are more complicated. The regulatory environment is unpredictable. Due diligence is much more expensive. This is a role that the government could play in a very targeted way, rather than providing the generic across the board, we're gonna train all the farmers. I think it's great, we should train farmers. But if we could target our capacity building in a way that affects a risk profile of specific investments, I think that could be more efficient, more effective, more impactful. And the financing, you've written a great paper on that. I'm not gonna talk about it. But just because you wrote the paper doesn't mean it's gone away. Can we be more creative with the grants that we have available? Can we do more to buy down equity requirements? Can we do more with guarantees, partial risk guarantees? Can we do more on equity? Why aren't we doing more on equity? Every other development finance institution in the developing world is doing equity and we're not. Which leads me to the last point. Is it time, the last three years of an administration is a perfect time to re-examine some of our self-imposed policy restrictions, the vestiges of a different paradigm when we weren't trying to attract investment to our development priorities. Things like the Federal Credit Reform Act, completely silent on all the tools I just mentioned, in agriculture, for example. We can't do crop insurance. Why can't we do crop insurance? It's because the FCERA is silent on it. And then the last word on the role of business, I know you're tapping your hand, but I'm done, I'm almost done. This is not just a laundry list, a list of things to do for the administration. There is a shared agenda. The role of the private sector is huge here. Agencies have been creative. They have tried to do even things that aren't that innovative, like funds in Georgia. And they have their hands slapped by Congress. Why is that? Because there's nobody on the hill. There's no business constituency there to explain that there is a business case for development that they're willing to pursue and that they need a broader range of tools to do it. Thank you, Jerry. I think this sets up our panel very, very nicely. I'm gonna ask my panelists to come up and please join me in thanking Jerry as the panelists is coming up. Okay. I'm just cognizant of the time. I think it was really tremendous that we had Gail Smith stay for so long. I think most folks wanted to hear what she had to say. So I think it was totally worth it that we went into a little bit of double overtime to have her given all the constraints and the many things that she's got in her inbox. So I also appreciate Jerry's willingness to be economical in her comments. So thank you, Jerry. I just, given the constraints, I think most people have seen or can see the biographies of the speakers that are in front of you. We have a very distinguished set of panelists to talk about this issue of partnership for growth from a variety of perspectives. I think what I'm gonna ask each of the speakers to do is think about shrinking somewhat their comments a little bit. We've talked to each individually and then we're gonna try and go to questions. I'm also gonna ask to the extent that folks have time, I think we might go into a little bit of extra time to the extent folks are willing to do that for 10 or 15 minutes beyond what we're allotted to at 11 if folks are willing to do that as well. So I'm trying not to abuse people's schedules, including my friends, the panelists schedules. I haven't checked with them on this and they may have other commitments. And so it seemed like a good idea at the time. I'm at a think tank. I'm supposed to think of theoretical solutions to these things, right? So why don't I stop there? I'm gonna ask Patrick to dive in. Patrick, you were at MCC in a past life. You're now at FHI 360. You also had a past life at AID as well and had over 20 years in Africa living there. So you're first. Great, let me just make a few points. I was involved in some of the early interagency meetings when PFG was introduced and our question was, what is this? And as it evolved, interesting aspects of it drew on some of the dimensions of the MCC. So for those of us who were at MCC, we found that both affirming and on the right track. And a couple of those things were one, it was selective. So there were only four countries that were selected and they were selected on the basis of some rigorous analysis, some real criteria. And guiding that was where can we achieve real results? Second, it had a focus on economic growth and that's really significant and really different. It wasn't about whatever we think is going to make sense. It's about what will overcome the constraints to economic growth because that's how you reduce poverty in a country. And then there's a third aspect of it which I think of as the Smith Doctrine. And it was imbued with the Smith Doctrine and we heard Gail enunciate it today which really is policy cohesion, strategic deployment of resources and division of labor. And that's something that Gail has been working on for over 20 years in her work with the US government is to achieve those ends so that you get more effective joint work, people are rowing in the right direction, all in the same direction. So you have those dimensions. And then the PFG took a tool that MCC had developed which is the constraints to economic growth analysis which is an economic analysis of an economy and use that as a way to identify priority objectives with a partner country. So that constraints to economic growth analysis is done by joint teams. It models partnership and it helps to then use the convening power of the PFG as a way of bringing people together around some specific objectives. And what that does is it influences the trajectory of our work together. It influences the trajectory of the relationships that we form on a government to government basis and below the principle level at a working level and also at a civil society level. It influences the priority setting that leads to an influence on resource allocation. It influences how effective we are and efficient in tackling the priorities that we've identified. And finally that has an impact on development results and you take the case of Tanzania where the constraints to economic growth identified that was done for the PFG identified power as the major constraint or one of the two major constraints. And now you see the US government's relationships with the government of Tanzania orienting towards how to overcome that priority. So you can see a real direct influence at the country level on our development work. Let me stop there. Thank you, Patrick. Maureen, you have a new life. You're now a banker but you also had a previous life at the MCC as well as worked around in development as well as in state government. So you have a couple different perspectives both from your past life at MCC as well as in, to some extent I think an outsider looking in in your current life at working at an African bank. Maureen, the floor is yours. Thanks, Dan. And thanks for having me here. It's so fun to be back in Washington talking about MCC and things we've done a long time ago. But what I thought I'd do is just talk a little bit about the early days of MCC and how the constraints analysis came about and then how we as Africa's largest bank, standard bank, is engaging with the US government around its development work on the continent of Africa. So just quickly, when we walked in the door at MCC with a billion dollars and eight people and sort of told go forth and figure this out. I mean, we really were starting with the blank sheet of paper. And I think I was part of the team that was lucky enough to go out to engage with the countries after they were first selected to come up with their compacts. And basically, we explained, well, you can come back to us with anything as long as it leads to growth that's measurable, that you've had a consultative process. And honestly, the countries were doing this. There must be something in this paper here that the US government must want something. You can't just be telling us we can do anything. And we said, nope, you can do anything. You can do social investments, infrastructure, agriculture, roads, whatever you want. And I think countries really appreciated that, but at the same time kind of looked at us like, oh my goodness. And the clock was ticking in Washington for us to get compacts done. And the clock was ticking in country for them to get the compacts done. The expectations were so high. So the first round of compacts, I think they were really good compacts. But it took countries a long time because they went out and started this consultative process, the world's our oyster, we can do anything. And so to get it down to something that we could finance took a long time. And as you may remember, we were under a lot of pressure to get the money moving at the time. So I think the constraints analysis came about because there was sort of, it was a very practical thing. We needed to find a way to structure the conversation, to add a little bit of analytics to the process, and to help the countries get started in a way that was a little bit more structured. And interestingly enough, there was a big debate at MCC whether the constraints analysis was the right tool. There was some discussion about whether we should use a more competitiveness model. But at the end of the day, the constraints analysis was what we decided on. And it's really interesting to see that it's now the foundation of the PFG. I think in terms of some of the points Jerry was making around the private sector, I also think it was difficult for MCC in the early days to bring in the private sector. Because again, it was all driven around getting these compacts done. And there was consultation in the beginning, but probably not enough. And so then what we ended up having to do is go around and shop these compacts to firms and companies and say, hey, look at all these great things we're doing. Couldn't you build around it? We're doing agriculture in Ghana. Here's an opportunity for you. And there was sort of a mismatch. And I think that brings me to kind of my role now with Standard Bank, which is one of my lessons I've learned over the years in terms of trying to bring in the private sector and development actors together is that from the private sector side, it really has to be about solving a problem because there's no firm that's gonna say, hey, let's go partner with the US government just for the sake of it. If they can run their business without any help from anybody, that's what they're gonna do. And so you have to have the tools in your toolbox to be able to respond to the problems that a firm is trying to resolve, whether it's a risk that they can't deal with, whether it's long-term financing, you know, whatever the case may be. And so in terms of what we're doing with the US government, I have to say that Power Africa has been very energizing inside of our bank. And I don't know if how power was selected as a priority for President Obama if it was the result of the PFG process or well, that's good news because then you can say that it's working because, you know, for the last five years, I've been at, we're done. But you know, I think about the energy inside of our bank all the time I've been trying to sell agriculture, whatever the government's priorities and how we can collaborate, but really power is the first time that there's, at the highest levels of the organization, our CEO is engaged in trying to figure out how we can kind of work with this energy that's been created around Power Africa. They then asked me to go out and ask my colleagues, oh, what do they think about the PFG? There is not a person of the 40,000 people at Standard Bank that know what the PFG is. But it doesn't really matter because the whole idea is that as long as the US government is focusing on solving the problems that are the biggest constraints to growth, you can call it whatever you wanna call it. It doesn't really make a difference. But, you know, so we have been, and maybe Dan, if I'm going on too long, you can cut me off. But, you know, one of the things that we've done is that we as a bank have done an analysis of the Power Africa countries looking at what the key constraints are to investments and we're gonna be presenting that to the interagency in the next couple of weeks. And it's because we actually really appreciate the role that all of the US agencies working together can play to solve those constraints. And it's not just the US government agencies, which in and of itself is very powerful, but it's also the leverage that the US government has with other donors. You know, if you look at the announcements around Power Africa, all of a sudden the African development banged $2 billion for power on the continent and you have other African firms putting money up and it's kind of this leverage effect that's happening. And I do think that the US government sort of commitments to funding for power are important, but it's really that policy side that are the problems that the private sector can't fix and that's where the US government leverage can be super helpful. And the last thing I'll say is that, especially around Power Africa, is that I do think that it's been a success in terms of mobilizing interests, mobilizing other donors, getting people excited about solving this core constraint to growth on the continent. But I would encourage the US government to be thoughtful about how they can be flexible with the tools they have in their toolbox because, you know, there's always this discussion, I'm sure anyone who follows Africa, we've talked about this a lot. It's not so much that there's a lack of funding for projects, it's the lack of projects to fund or bankable deals, so to speak. And I think with one of the unintended consequences of Basel III is that not only now are you gonna have the lack of projects to fund, but you're gonna have the lack of long-term money to fund them. And so all of a sudden we have all this energy and we're gonna be fixing the regulatory environment and we're gonna be doing all the right things to sort of make the environment better for growth, but now we don't have the tools to actually invest because of, let's call it the disincentives to invest in long-term financing on the continent. So anyway, those are just some of my thoughts, but I do wanna congratulate the US government for everything they've done to sort of make it easier for the private sector engage and would just encourage us to keep moving in that direction. Let me, I'm gonna only insert myself this one time. I wanna flag what Maureen was saying about the inflexibility of instruments or the need for more flexible instruments, and this is something that Jerry referenced in her report and as I said, please read the entire report that Jerry's put together because one of the things that she cites, and I think Maureen, you're alluding to this, is one of the challenges I think that the administration could focus on is gonna be a difficult one for a number of political reasons is the issue of what's called the carbon cap at OPIC and the Center for Global Development is looking at this issue as well. The one campaign has also come forward and said, well maybe we needed to kind of rethink this. This was something done in the Bush administration to restrict the number of transactions in essence in the power sector because of the balancing of environmental versus other priorities. The problem is in countries like Nigeria where you have mainly a gas, much of the energy's gonna be produced in the gas sector, we can either finance it either OPIC in the United States government and the West if you wanna call it that IFC and others or China's gonna do it. So we can choose whether we're gonna be holier than thou just to congratulate ourselves or we can maybe have some flexibility. So it's in Jerry's report and Maureen's not eludes to sort of a broader set of tools and I just wanna insert myself just this one time just to signal that this is something that it's something the administration should look at but also I know this is something that's gonna require help from Republicans in Congress if they wanna do this and so this is a two-way street and it takes two to tango so I'll stop there. So with that I'm gonna hand it over now to my friend Daniela Blue Ayres. Great, thanks Dan and thanks Patrick and Maureen. I mean I think you've heard from Gail a really kind of broad perspective on the administration perspective and what she and I think all of us have seen is the potential in PFG. So I'll just say a couple of additional points linking into how this connects also to our diplomatic relationship and from the State Department perspective and I think that some of the power of partnership for growth is that it does also ground our relationship on development and all of the things that we do there in our bilateral relationship and then also with the kind of recognizing some of the challenges in terms of broadening beyond governments but it still does really leverage the diplomatic relationships that we have and enables us to engage working with USAID, other agencies, other partners on long-term issues related to policy and the enabling environment which we do have a unique ability to address on issues like power and otherwise. So I think we've seen it and both Secretary Clinton and Secretary Kerry now have seen that what the partnership for growth and these types of models do is something that is very aligned with building, strengthening our partnership with countries, building a kind of mutual accountability approach for results in our full range of development efforts that that is very powerful. And I think we have seen success in it as Gail has spoken to earlier where we're seeing in those countries a more strategic focus of our investments, a stronger emphasis on policy reform so not just assistance linked to policy reform so we're really getting more bang for our buck when we're putting it into the country and a stronger accountability on both sides for results. You know, all of that said I think we do also recognize that there's challenges and there's things that we need to do to deepen both in the countries that are already partnership for both countries and then in particular more broadly in changing kind of how we work and how we leverage this kind of spaghetti bowl of tools that exist across the US government. And we do still, I think, do have the challenges of rigid budgets and the challenge of making trade-offs when already we have people on the ground, priorities, et cetera. I think that there are ways that we can do that and that we have partnership for growth. I think we did it in part by having really strong attention. We had attention from the White House, we had attention from the agencies. There was a real spotlight on those countries, a spotlight on the data-driven analysis that created an accountability for those who were programming dollars, who were spending their time diplomatically to be on the hook for engaging against what the constraints said. I think we're seeking to do that in other ways in the broader set of countries which we engage. So for instance, the State Department has, our ambassadors lead, what's called an integrated country strategy process in every country in the globe, which has been rolled out over recent years and we're working to really make a stronger, more data-driven underpinning of those strategies and a more holistic engagement of the agencies at post and as appropriate governments. So those strategies span the full range of activities of the U.S. government, so economic growth being component, but also covering other areas, security, health, all aspects of our engagement with a country diplomatically, from a diplomatic and development perspective. And we're actually doing a deeper engagement in a couple of countries right now, Liberia and Burma where ambassadors volunteered and said we really want to have this type, support for this type of approach, lighter touch than partnership for growth, but still the same principles in the way that they want to engage in approach. And I think you also see in programs like PEPFAR and in many other programs across U.S. government that the principles of let's work with our partners, let's sit down, understand our joint interests is really taking hold and much more expected in the way that we're working from our partners and from ourselves. The last thing I'll say here is that I do think we do still face a bit of that tension between to the degree to which development is kind of a product, is it are we delivering a malaria outcome, are we delivering a agriculture outcome and a partnership, right? A partnership that's complex, it's customized by country, it's not something you can package easily. And I suggest in the end, I think we have to find the balance between those two, right? It's hard to deliver a product without a good partnership and for sure the outcomes you get from that product will not be sustainable without the partnership. So I think that's the space that we're in of how do we build that strong partnership that allows us to deliver outcomes with them over the long term. Thank you, Daniela. Daniela is the senior advisor for development to the secretary at the department of state that I didn't mention that prior to her remarks. I'm gonna ask Eric Postel, who's the assistant administrator for the Bureau of Economic Growth Education Environment at AID to run cleanup. And then I'm gonna open it up and if people are willing to stay, I'd like to keep you all until about 1110 or 1115 if people wanna do, I think this is such a great panel and there's been so much said. I know there are a lot of thoughtful people in the room and I wanna make sure that we have a chance to hear from you so it's more dynamic. So with your forbearance, we're gonna extend it about 15 minutes. So please, Eric. So I'm gonna offer a pack to all of you. If you'll all not conflate that I'm gonna do this in 30 seconds with lack of USAID involvement because we have lots to say and lots to be enthusiastic about, then I will really do this in 30 seconds so that we can talk about your questions which are really important. Simply to say that we've made a lot of progress and a lot of people have put in a lot of work and some of them are out in the audience and you could talk to them. The constraints analysis we are trying to move out on and it's already happened organically in USAID, thank you MCC for introducing this to us and to the NSS team. But we've done more than a dozen and I'm trying to instigate some discussion about actually criteria where these would be used regularly, whether it's PFG or not. To a couple things that Maureen and Jerry said, yes, I think there are some things that we need in terms of tools and all that but as a couple people alluded to, that's in this town where we don't even have budgets let alone new tools unless a lot of people really were able to talk to people to create bandwidth for those kind of efforts. I think it's gonna be a challenge. And also we did achieve some budget flexibility and in this budget environment, even when there might not have been increase in resources, there were shifts in resources or there were budgets protected. And it was certainly the case that in OMB and at F processes and across the board, people were very mindful that well, this is a PFG country, we've got this rich partnership, we need to really try to work hard to protect this budget. So that's important in this kind of setting but I think part of the real challenge here is that there aren't interest groups advocating very, there are a few I shouldn't say none but there aren't people advocating for robust EG budgets. I mean Dan did through a report, USGLC and some other folks are but that's part of the challenge. If you have an EG budget, you can actually do some of this stuff. So I'll stop right there. Thank you and I associate myself with your remarks Eric. So thank you on that about having an EG budget. So thank you for this audience's for Barron's and thank you to my friends on the panel for working with me on this. So I'm gonna open it up now. There's some very thoughtful people. I have a whole house of people I'd like to call in. If I don't see their hands, they're gonna hear from me. So I'm gonna first, I'm gonna ask Steve Coltai who used to be at the State Department who was pleased if you'd come up and we'll do this. We'll gather two or three questions together. I see Beth Tritter back there as well. I'd like to hear from Beth Tritter as well as this gentleman up here in the front row. So we'll start with those three questions first. Please Steve. Thank you so much Dan. This is such a great idea to have this conversation and I really appreciate it. I come from the entrepreneurship world and the startup world and tried to get the entrepreneurship program going at the State Department. And one of the things that- Which you did do successfully. Well, thank you. And one of the things that I find interesting about these conversations about partnership is that coming from outside Washington and from sort of an entrepreneurial startup background, the partnership looks very unilateral as opposed to bilateral vis-a-vis other parts of the US economy. So there's more to the US than the US government, right? We have big companies and then we actually have a lot of small companies. Actually, the greatest growth in the United States comes from the small companies. From 1985 to 2005 according to Kaufman Foundation, all of the net job growth in the United States was in small and medium sized businesses and startups. Startups and supporting startups is almost entirely absent from the US government's strategy. There is very, very little that we do including them in the partnership for growth, which is particularly interesting because in the developing world, private sector investment growth is not only already larger than ODI, but the Rockefeller Foundation estimates that it will be twice ODI as quickly as 2020. And that includes a great deal of private equity and venture capital as well as large banks. So my question to the group, and this really relates to something that Jerry brought up and that Dan and I feel strongly about and that Maureen also mentioned with respect to energy is in order for any of this kind of growth to happen, there has to be deal flow. That's what we call it in the venture business. No amount of money is gonna solve the problem if there aren't companies to invest in and projects to invest in. So there has to be deal flow. And deal flow, generally speaking, comes from entrepreneurs who start new ways of developing energy. And then that actually is one of the biggest parts of the US government's own energy program. So the issue that I wanna raise is why is the United States government really almost now the last of the major donors to have any sort of equity facility for startups, for venture? And if any of you agree that this is a problem and should be changed, which I suspect several of you do, then my question to you is how can we fix this? Beth. Thank you and thanks to the panel for a great presentation. I actually wanted to thank Patrick for offering the specific example of Tanzania and Power Africa as sort of an example of how our PFG process has actually driven a US government decision-making process around resources and focus. And Eric, you alluded to that as well. Could one of you offer some more specifics about how the PFG process has actually affected budget priorities and either short-up resources for certain things or caused a reprioritization? And if you can offer some thoughts on what sort of conversations you've had with Capitol Hill on that and what their reaction has been, that would be really helpful as well. Getting this gentleman up here. Someone have a microphone for him. Okay, thank you. My English is not so clear, but anywhere I'll speak in English. Would you just identify? I'm the ambassador of Côte d'Ivoire, the Ivory Coast. When I saw the title of this panel, I said that I cannot miss it because I know that it is CIC speaking about the issue of sustainable development. And I have come here and I have listened. I want to thank and congratulate you. What I just want to mention is, let's say an observation, a remark and question. First, what I want to say is that Africa today is moving from pessimism to optimism. That's point number one. And to sustain that, as you know, the annual growth on the continent is above 5%. This is the general growth rate, above 5%. Speaking about my country, the growth rate, let's say in 2011 was minus 4.7%. I mean under zero. And by December 2012, the growth rate was 9.8%, which means that roughly we have grown for almost more than 13%. This is Africa today. And in addition to that, Africa is where today you can find the most important arable land in the world. On the planet, let us say. And we are speaking about power energy, power Africa, about the energy. We are eager to be, let's say, witnessing how the president, I mean President Obama, has deeply engaged on that issue. I just want to mention that in our region, in West Africa, a region of 15 countries with 300,000 million population. And there we have an integration energy program connection between KwaDiwa and Ghana and Togo. Ghana, KwaDiwa and Burkina Faso. KwaDiwa and Mali, KwaDiwa and Guinea. KwaDiwa and Sierra Leone, KwaDiwa and Liberia. Total eight countries. This program is an integration program. My question is how, since this program is an integration program, since this program is energy program to which president give, let's say the US, give such an important interest, how can we benefit from your support to show us that when we take the initiative to do something by ourself, we can be pushed to be encouraged and make it happen. Thank you very much. That's what I just want to say and I want to congratulate you for giving us your support. Thank you very much. Thank you Ambassador, thank you very much. Okay panelists, why don't you each take, I'm gonna go one at a time, I start you Eric. And then I think most of these are directed at our friends in the administration, so we'll put most of the emphasis on Eric and Daniela. Please, Eric, please. Okay, in quick summary form, we can always take a little more offline, but in no particular order. In terms of the budget priorities, another specific example would be the Philippines. Basically what happened was they identified the constraints and let me weave in something that starts to talk to the stuff that you brought up, Steve. So one of the things about the constraints is they're looking at what's in the way of growth, growth by companies, small companies and startups, right? So one of the things that they started realizing is like rule of law, corruption, some of those things, they're in the way. They were in the way of startup entrepreneurs as well as big companies. In fact, if anything, it's some of the big companies that have been benefiting from that in some cases. So, but there weren't the resources. But what that forced them to do is to do a deep analysis of the whole USG portfolio of activities in the Philippines. And of course, one of the big priorities for a number of years across multiple administrations had been on the security side. And that is, it should be that way in my opinion. But what they did is it forced them to really, really look hard at that. And what they realized is that they were dealing with and spending money across the entire island of Mindanao. And yet when they really looked at it, they didn't need to do the entire island. And Melinda Manning, I think I saw come in and she's here and she can go into greater depth about this. But what they ended up doing to everyone's satisfaction and people involved in security issues in the United States government and on the Philippine side is that they readjusted that money and they put more money on a select number of places and took the rest of the money. And they're using it on PFG to deal with some of these other issues. And so there are specific examples like that, not across the board. One of the lessons I think we've agreed on is that if you're gonna do PFG in a country where basically everything is under initiatives and earmarks, it's very hard to move the dial quickly. It's not impossible, but you've got one hand tied behind your back. And so in this process that Gail described that we're still thinking through things, that's another one of the factors that we have to think through. You know, Steve, that of course there are some modest tools and sometimes people have created them in terms of equity as one of the issues that entrepreneurs need. There were the enterprise funds, USAID just rolled out. In Pakistan funds for entrepreneurs, OPIC has done its funds. But I think it's correct to say that most everybody knows that more could be done. And to some extent it's a question of mandates and these things regularly get to be very, very difficult with all kinds of holds and disagreements and mixed authorities. And frankly, people who are scared because from the world for which you're, you know, Marines in, you come from, I come from, we know that not every business is gonna work out. But when one cylindra goes down, there's a major problem around here. And so that's part of the context. So I don't know fully as non-career deceivers and I don't know hopefully how we get from one to the other. But you know, it's certainly, everyone's talking about it in this room. I mean, Jerry, so many people and in different parts of the government. I mean, OPIC's regularly raising this issue. I know Elizabeth is. MCC is gonna try some very interesting things and in some compacts. So I think everybody's trying to nibble away at it because I don't see some big bang. And for the ambassador, I would just say that there are some efforts going on in terms of power Africa, even though it's focused on specific countries, some of those countries are part of regional efforts. And so there are some things going on regionally in West Africa that have to do with regional power grids and things like that, that is part of the way to connect. So, Daniela. Yeah, I mean, I think Eric has covered a lot of it just to add on the question of equity and financing tools. I mean, I think, as Eric has said, I think we do recognize the gap. And certainly when you look at the US versus Europeans, if you look at Germany, if you look at the Dutch FMO, if you look at Japan, South Korea, I mean, many others have much more robust tools in this space and development banks or other structures that enable them to do more. So I think our companies see that. I think our development institutions see that. And I think it's a, I don't have the answer to getting us there, but I think there, at a minimum, the recognition's there. We are doing some, there are a variety of structures that are trying to deal with that power Africa has sought to bring the different tools of the US government together. So bring together grants from USAID with OPIC and with XM and others. We have a similar, we have another structure around climate change. It's relatively a small fund, but it's a fund between where state and OPIC look to identify transactions. And there's grant capital that's available to OPIC to do that. And there's a kind of an intro, again, they're an interagency steering group around it. So there are ways to get around it. To some extent in the current architecture where you can better align grants and our debt tools, et cetera. But just to say, I think this is something that I think will be an ongoing topic of discussion of how can we more ably support startups and frankly a range of other types of transactions and private investments that we know are a really important tool for development especially as countries are progressing quickly in their growth. Can I ask one of you to answer Beth's question or Eric or Danielle if you could speak to her specific question about affecting resource allocation and or any conversations with the Congress and Eric I'm looking at you if you might just revisit that. Sorry, I gave the example but thank you Dan that you also asked about how did Congress receive it. I mean we, I think I've been part of two briefings and there were questions on the subjects and we've talked through for instance that specific example. We've talked through a couple of the other examples and I think that people work, they come from different perspectives. I mean one of the people was very concerned about what are you doing to security assistance but was actually quite comfortable after hearing exactly what had happened and how the process and that there were so many agencies involved including people like DOJ have been part of this and others so in general people have acknowledged and been comfortable with some of the shifts that have gone on. Nobody has come out of the sky and said you know what here's another 50 million for PFG but also we didn't ask for 50 million for PFG per se. We worked on PFG through the normal budgeting processes so I hope that answers it. Patrick, sorry Danielle please. Go ahead Danielle. Maybe I'll just add a small point to that. I mean I do think while there's openness I do think we see a challenge when we look to have resources that are more flexible where we that are flexible and say okay when we you know if the now let's enable ourselves to take the analysis as the basis and then allocate resources based on that at some future point. So here's the criteria you know frankly in the way that MCC has flexibility right which says here's some criteria we are then going to be very rigorous and how we apply it and how we select countries. I think that's still a challenge and you know a challenge to both what PFG does and kind of the more data driven approach that we're talking about here. I can give a couple examples. First I just want to say with respect to the equity investing. There is interest in the US in doing that. In MCC we established a big investment fund in Indonesia but we ran into all sorts of resistance and in part it's because there's a strong strain of American thought that that's not the role of government that that's the role of the private sector. So in setting up the investment facility in Indonesia we had to deal with that within our own organization because we had economists who had that strong view that the government shouldn't be picking winners as they put it and then within Congress and more broadly in the community. So I think that really has a lot to do with where we are. That said we are doing it. There are examples of where we're doing it. With respect to specific examples let me give a couple from Tanzania. So Tanzania has a constraints analysis done under the auspices of the PFG that identifies power and transport is the big constraints to economic growth in that country. What that means it is prospective as Daniela said. Now as the US thinks about how is it gonna invest development funds in Tanzania. That thinking is guided by that analysis done by the in the context of the PFG which is really a partnership context. So it's not us just coming and saying hey we think you need power. It's in the context of a very serious and comprehensive conversations that are going on that were convened around the PFG. And so for example if there is another compact in Tanzania that investment is gonna be guided by this and I even know USAID as they were thinking about how are we gonna program agriculture funds in Tanzania. They were using the constraints analysis and saying okay how does this guide how we invest funds and that they were completely adjusting their investment strategies based on responding to not just the analysis but the whole the partnership and the discussions that that analysis is embedded in. And a similar thing happened in Ghana and it continues to happen and then there's a great example from El Salvador as well with the Council for Growth which also gets at your point Steve about what are we doing to encourage small entrepreneurs. El Salvador gives a good example of where the Partnership for Growth gave real energy to the dialogue between a socialist government and the private sector around removing constraints to business startup and to business operation. I mean Eric you were right, you were in the middle of that. So I just, I wanna make sure do we answer the question of the ambassador's comment or question about regionalization. Did you cover that Eric? He did, you know one other thing on regionalization is MCC although it has country focused programs it also in West Africa in particular has its program with Benin is looking at the power supply there which is linked into the regional power pool and so it is by definition in order to address the constraints it has to address regional issues. Look it's 1115 we've gone into triple over time I really appreciate everyone for staying. I think for additional questions folks might address the panelists bilaterally offline but I wanna thank everybody for staying for so long I wanna thank the panelists for staying over as well so please join me, thank you everybody. And another resource is Larry Knowles back there cause he's traveled around and looked at PFG in different countries so you can talk to him for his unvarnished view.